


Green Grow the Laurels

by Sossity



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 10:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sossity/pseuds/Sossity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer before Depot, Ben Fraser goes to stay with his father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Grow the Laurels

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to kalijean for weathering the snippets thrown at her close to a year ago now and to SLWalker for telling me to _post_ the damn thing already.

Benton watched the sun dance over the worn wooden floor and waited for sleep. He studied the way the old tree outside his window turned the wall opposite into a moving portrait of shadows and tried not to listen to the voice coming from the next room.

_"He's my son, George, of course I love him. Sometimes I just want to strangle him, that's all."_

The little bed was pushed right up against the adjoining wall. He hated it. He camped out as often as he could get away with, these days. Sometimes he wished he could live out there.

_"He's spent years avoiding the boy. Ben gets accepted into the RCMP and now he wants to get to know him."_ Silence, and then, so quietly Ben had to press his cheek right up against the cold green paint to hear, _"Where did we go wrong, love?"_

* * *

Corporal Robert Fraser, RCMP lived in a cabin built by his own two hands before Benton was born. Ben wasn't used to being this far north anymore; a thin shirt and summer couldn't hold off the bite in the air. There were just scrub pines up here, cleared away up to the bridge, leaving Ben and his grandmother standing in long grass and flowers. The openness made Ben a little uncomfortable as they hugged goodbye. She told him to take care of himself, and to write often, as she squeezed him with arms like stranded wire. He stood there as she got back in the old pickup, waved goodbye again, and bullied the truck over the dirt--well, mud--road back the way they'd come.

Tuesdays weren't Corporal Fraser, RCMP's usual day off, but he'd assured them he'd be home to welcome Ben, to show him around the little town, get him settled in for the next two and a half months. 

There was a small, rock-lined indentation that parted the grass in a crooked line, disappearing under the front steps and coming out the other side again. Water must run through there in the spring, after the snows melt.

He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. Not that he had honestly been expecting one.

An hour later, he decided to go see the town for himself. It was only five miles, after all. He could walk that with a broken leg if he had to. He shouldered his bag again and stood up.

* * *

It really was a small town, even smaller than the one he'd been living in for the past year or so. He wandered between the low, regularly spaced buildings, catching curious looks from some of the residents. There was a tiny diner in the center with a closed sign in the window and a barroom nearby with the sound of a woman singing floating through the open screen door.

Despite the relative coolness of the day, Ben was feeling a bit overheated and thirsty after his walk. Besides, what else did he have to do?

There was a long string of bells attached to the other side of the door that welcomed him into the dark, stuffy room. The older woman wiping down the bar stopped singing and looked up at him. And looked at him. And kept looking at him, without ever quite bringing her gaze up to his face. He glanced away uncomfortably. Dark wood-paneled walls contrasted with white wicker furniture. Several people sat solitary in various places, mostly intent on whatever business had brought them there in the middle of the afternoon. 

A young man at the bar who was watching him, and who _did_ meet his eye saluted Ben with his pint glass and a dangerous, enticing smirk. He turned his head away as Ben made his way through the room and muttered something at the bartender that made her face turn red. 

Ben sat down, anticipating something that made his heart beat faster and the wood grain of the bar and the skinned knuckles resting on it overexpose themselves onto his mind. 

He swallowed and made himself smile.

"Hello, Eric."

* * *

His father still wasn't home by the time he strode back up the path that evening, the sun casting him a different shadow than before, so he spread out his sleeping bag behind the treeline and watched the pine branches above him drift back and forth in the barely moving air. The hard ground under him made him feel almost at home, somehow. It would be easy enough to drift off to sleep, even considering the early hour.

He found himself back on his feet and walking toward the cabin, quietly drifting up the steps, trying the doorknob one last time, stepping back onto the ground and peering into the front window, hands pressed against his face and the glass to block out the reflection of the land around him. The room was dark and empty. There was a worn chair by the dead fireplace and a half-full bottle of whisky on the table.

He gave up.

There was a figure sitting cross-legged on his bag, not entirely surprising him. Eric shifted over to make room as he sat down.

The daylight burned away some of the shadows from around Eric's eyes, but he still hid, somehow, behind easy openness and professed friendship. Ben watched the skin around Eric's lips draw tight and his eyes flicker in his concentrated study of Ben's own face, trying to understand the passage of time.

The last time Ben had seen Eric, his all-consuming worry had been understanding algebra. 

He tried to think of something to say they hadn't already worn out this afternoon. 

_So the Mountie's Brat's in town, eh? Good lord, what on earth brings Eric Kitikmeot here?_

Ben's thumb brushed through the dark patch under Eric's eye. Eric didn't move.

* * *

"Well, you know how it is. Or at least you will after you get your own posting. There's always something to keep you away, son."

Ben watched his father stir the pot of oatmeal with a strong, hairy hand. The thick glue bubbled like some sort of swamp monster on the wood stove. He wasn't sure he was hungry anymore. 

"It was that blasted McNally this time. Bloody idiot thinks he can raise sheep at this latitude." Robert Fraser tutted and shook his head at Ben, smug in his knowledge of livestock. "Man had the gall to stand there and _argue_ with me! After I saved his queen...er, bell-something...from his own dog! Well, we'll see who's right when winter comes, won't we, boy?"

_Call me Ben. Benton. It's the name you gave me._

His father looked around at the bare cupboards, scowled, pulled a bag from his belt. He rummaged inside it until he pulled out a large hunk of pemmican, held it over the oatmeal, and began slicing it into large pieces with his pocket knife. 

"So you've been well, I hope?"

Ben looked up from the pot. "Yeah. I camped over in the trees. It was nice."

"Good, that's good." Robert yanked the spoon out of the mess with an effort and shook it into two battered metal cups. "Vanity--you'll know her, runs the bar down in town, nice girl--says she saw you yesterday," he added with a sly look on his face as they moved to the table. "Sounded quite taken with you."

Benton stared at his oatmeal. It was gray with brown lumps and black streaks and appeared to be discoloring the tin. "Did she?"

"Certainly did, lad." His father bit into his breakfast with relish. "Said you found Eric."

"I did, yes."

"Tell me the two of you haven't gotten into trouble yet." Robert chuckled. "Remember the time you boys fell into that outhouse? Took three men to pull you out and four to hose you off."

"I remember," Ben muttered.

* * *

It was true that Benton Fraser's mostly-homeschooled education to this point hadn't included a large curriculum of animal husbandry, but he was still fairly sure that you weren't supposed to shear sheep with actual garden shears. In the middle of July. Also that it would be a good idea to hold them down somehow. Still, he was probably better off than Eric, who had one leg over his sheep and was trying to get the dull, rusty pair of scissors Mr. McNally'd gave him to actually close. 

Benton rested his hands on his knees and wondered if the afternoon's pay was really worth it.

Mr. McNally, with his arm in an unexplained and suddenly ominous sling, was watching from the edge of the paddock. "You boys are doing fine!" he called. "Show those animals who's in charge!" Ben tried not to glare. The sheep had no such compunctions, and looked at its--his? Her? Benton had no urge whatsoever to sex the animal--owner with death in its fiery eyes. 

Which is, of course, when it broke away from him. 

The sheep gathered speed and ran straight for McNally's legs like a rocket. It bowled him over when it hit and kept on going, out the open gate and off to the horizon. 

When Benton could move again, he ran over to check on Mr. McNally, who was fine, if a little winded. As soon as McNally was back on his feet, covered in hoof prints and mud but otherwise fine, he wrenched out of Ben's grasp and took off after the escaping sheep, shouting and swearing.

Mrs. McNally poked her head out the far away front door and screamed at the top of her lungs,   
"Would either of you boys like something to drink?"

Eric burst out laughing.

* * *

_He was ten years old._

_He was ten years old and this was the first time in his life he'd set foot in a schoolhouse._

_He didn't know how to_ move, _didn't know how to react to the other children._

_He wasn't expecting the isolation. Everyone seemed to be expecting him to do something, but he couldn't figure out what. They all fit cleanly, it seemed to him; they'd all known each other for years. Why_ should _they talk to him? Why_ should _they listen to his stories?_

_So he left_ them _alone, as well. Concentrated on his work._

_The native boy who sat at the back of the room was waiting in the doorway for him at the end of the day. Benton clutched his books and kept his feet apart._

_"So," said the boy. "You must be the Mountie's brat."_

* * *

Sometimes he'd catch Eric humming while they worked; never a song he knew but would catch his interest all the same.

* * *

"You shouldn't drink so much."

Eric stared at him over his pool cue.

Ben swallowed. "Aboriginal metabolisms have a low tolerance for alcohol."

"You shouldn't sound so much like your grandmother," Eric returned before bringing his focus back down to the table. 

"I'm serious."

"That's what scares me." Eric took the shot he'd been carefully lining up for the past ten minutes. Ben followed the way Eric's black hair moved over the fabric of his jeans, the ends barely brushing his hip.

He moved his eyes back to Eric's game. "Even if I do, it doesn't change your genetic predisposition to alcoholism or the fact that you're drinking at three in the afternoon."

Eric snorted. "Ben."

"Yes."

"Get over here and pick up a cue."

Ben shook his head. "I told you, I don't know how--"

"It's eyes, brains, and hands. You'll pick it up as easy as you ever did anything, Brat."

Benton pulled himself reluctantly off the back wall and stepped over to the side of the table.

Eric grabbed his pint mug from the end of the bar and pushed it into Ben's hand. "But drink this first."

"Eric..."

"Just a sip."

"I..."

"Don't you trust me?"

Ben took a good look at the yellow fluid and wondered. He closed his eyes and put his lips where Eric's had been.

"Well?"

Ben handed the mug back, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and smiled sheepishly. "Crème soda."

* * *

He stood near the house for a few minutes and breathed in the grass and sun before turning to the McNallys' barn.

The out-of-place structure was dark and cool and quiet; an overwhelming smell of hay and manure hit him in the face as soon as he entered.

"He's a fool."

He turned around and Eric was leaning against the rough board wall just to the right of the door. Ben's eyes adjusted quickly, but he still had difficulty picking him out from the shadows that followed him. "Perhaps."

"He knows absolutely _nothing_ about those animals. It's ridiculous."

Ben rested his head on the wall next to Eric and waited.

Eric looked away. "He's a fool," he repeated.

"It's not a crime, Eric."

"Should be."

* * *

Kissing Eric was like kissing the sun. 

Closing the barn door would have been the wise thing to do, but Ben couldn't do it, couldn't shut out the light, couldn't break away. 

He painted Eric's neck with his open mouth, tasting sweat and sweet grass. Burning the back of his throat worse than grain alcohol. Eric shushed him; he fought a nonsensical giggle and lost. Eric caught it somehow, his collarbone shaking with stolen laughter, fighting to stay quiet. They were too exposed, too far gone to explain, and Ben couldn't think well enough to judge how long McNally had been gone, not with half his shirt buttons undone and Eric's hands sliding underneath. 

* * *

"New recruits report to Depot the week after next," he said, running his thumb along the stitching on the edge of the blanket they were laying on.

"Do they, now?" It was getting too close to fall to lie out naked, but Eric didn't care; his beautiful limbs sprawled uncovered. Benton had given in to weakness and put his own layers back on. 

"Yes."

"And what would the Mountie's Brat be worried about that for?"

His fingernails were getting unconscionably long. He'd have to trim them in the morning. "I'll be leaving Sunday."

"Oh." He made himself look. Eric's eyes shined out from underneath the carelessly thrown arm covering the side of his head. "That's pretty soon."

"Yeah."

* * *

Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP shifted on the narrow cot set down in his narrow Chicago apartment and turned the page of the book that failed miserably to hold his interest. "Dad?" he called out once as a name and a paragraph caught at his memory. "What happened with Mr. McNally's sheep?"

"Hm?" Robert Fraser replied from the chair, determinedly polishing his boots. "John McNally? He had _sheep_? Good lord."

"That summer before I went to Depot. You and he were arguing about whether they would survive the winter. Did they?"

"Oh, _that_ 's right. He sold them, I think. To a passing caravan of Gypsies, if you can believe it. It must have been, oh, about the end of September. They'd just stopped to get directions. Thought they were somewhere in Missouri." He shook his head. "I wonder if they ever made it out of Canada. Especially with all those sheep in tow."

Ben listened in silence for a while to the comforting whisper of the cloth as he tried to read.

"Dad?"

"Yes, son?" 

"Did you know that I slept with Eric?"

The polishing cloth stopped for a second, then continued on, as bright and hollow as before. Benton couldn't make himself look away from his book.

"I wondered, son."

Benton Fraser finished the chapter, blew out the light, and went to sleep.


End file.
